While ‘discourse’ has long
been an object of investigation in various disciplines, the contours of a new
transdisciplinary field of research are now coming to the fore: Discourse
Studies. Discourse Studies comprises numerous strands and approaches which deal
with the social production of meaning at the intersection of language and
society. While opening up critical perspectives on social problems in
contemporary societies, research on discourse typically aims to account for
meaningful phenomena in their social entanglements: discourse as knowledge and
power, discourse as language in use, discourse as text in context, discourse as
communicative practice.

One of the challenges in
Discourse Studies has been to articulate the epistemological reflexivity and
theoretical culture in the humanities with the theoretical resources and the
methodological tools of empirical social research, most notably with a
background in poststructuralism, interactionism and Critical Discourse
Analysis. Given an increasing need for interdisciplinary exchange, the First
International DiscourseNet Congress aims to represent the many strands,
schools, and perspectives in Discourse Studies, from the humanities to the
social sciences, from strictly interpretive to quantifying methodologies.

Reflecting the diversity of
topics and approaches in Discourse Studies, the following distinguished guests
have confirmed their participation:

Ruth Amossy

Paul Chilton

Tony McEnery

Bob Jessop

Barbara Johnstone

Theo van Leeuwen

Dominique Maingueneau

Ann Phoenix

André Salem

Yannis Stavrakakis

Jef Verschueren

We invite contributions
which deal with theoretical and/or methodological challenges in Discourse
Studies, preferably with a focus on empirical questions and objects. We
especially welcome papers which re-examine existing discourse theoretical
frameworks, apply new methodologies and reflect on the critical potentials of
Discourse Studies. Papers are invited to focus on studying discourses including
but not limited to:

· media discourse

· political discourse

· academic discourse

· educational discourse

· economic discourse

· medical discourse

· discourses of law and
justice

And which deal with topics
such as:

· knowledge and power

· subjectivity in
contemporary society

· critique and reflexivity

· discursive epistemology

· indexicality

· ideology

· bi-, multi- and
translingual communication

· discursive logics

· discourse and gender,
class, migration

· discourse and
discrimination

· formal and informal
discourse

· argumentation and
rhetorics

· social cognition

· institutional discourse

· multimodal interaction
and discourse analysis

· online media formats

· digital culture and
digital humanities

· crosscultural
interaction, multilingualism and language policy

· multimodality

· corpus

· conversation and
interaction

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be
submitted through our application form by 15 March 2015.

The presentations are normally in
English. However, you can get in touch with the organisers if you prefer to
present your paper in French, Spanish or German.

Notifications of acceptance will
be communicated by 1 May 2015.

If accepted, the early-bird fee (until 1 July
2015) will be 150 € for fully funded researchers and a reduced fee of 75 € for
enrolled students without access to institutional funding.

For further
information please visit the conference webpage: http://dnc1.discourseanalysis.net.